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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Has 9/11 Broken Us?

I avoid television. To me it has become an even greater nightmare of propaganda than has been predicted by broadcasting critics and dystopian sci-fi writers who have been warning us since the early days of radio. But SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars has posted a segment from 60 Minutes last night which is a rare departure from the disinformation mill, and it just left me ill with shame.

The story is bad enough - it exposes the abject depravity in our abandoning Iraqis who, however misguided, cooperated with and helped the United States military in the execution of our criminal and illegal occupation. Watch the whole thing. Here, however, I want to highlight one aspect that has graver implications for Americans - without diminishing the tragedy of the main story.

After learning from former Assistant Secretary of State Julia Taft that the Ford administration absorbed over 100,000 Vietnamese refugees in an eight-month period after the fall of Saigon, the correspondent confronted our current Assistant Secretary Ellen Sauerbrey with these numbers. Sauerbrey insisted that we cannot process more than around 2,000 Iraqi refugees this year. Why? he asked. What has changed?

Wait for it... 9/11. Yes, "Homeland Security" concerns have clogged the pipes so much that we cannot even do the right and moral thing by these people even if we wanted to. Note that there was widespread opposition to the Vietnamese refugees until after they arrived and our xenophobic tendencies were mollified by their humanity. So most Americans probably still don't want "those people" today, so it would require the kind of leadership as demonstrated by the otherwise execrable President Ford in order to do it again.

But now we have an excuse now - 9/11. 9/11! 9/11! 9/11!

Will we ever shake the fictions we have adopted since that infamous crime (which may never be solved)? Or has it utterly broken the back of the United States?

Retired General Paul Eaton on the message to potential allies:

"...if you throw your lot with the United States, they'll use you for a while and then they will – they'll just cut you off."

1 comment:

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